Posted April 10th, 2014

Tuxedo-Assembly candidate Dan Castricone this blasted a decision by federal bureaucrats that will soon impose a 10 percent electricity rate increase on Orange and Rockland County consumers and businesses.

The rate hikes are the consequence of a decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to create a ‘new capacity zone,’ in the Hudson Valley.

“The regulators assert that skyrocketing electricity rates will somehow induce power generators to come build plants in the Hudson Valley,” said Castricone. “But the rate hikes guarantee nothing except windfall profits for current power generators. In the meantime, small businesses, homeowners, rate payers and people desperately looking for work will suffer.”

Castricone noted that power can be generated in upstate New York much more cheaply than in the Hudson Valley, and that it would be much easier and far less expensive to construct a better and more reliable transmission system to move power from upstate to the Hudson Valley.

“With our inane bureaucracy it can take three years to get the permits to build a hamburger stand,” said Castricone. “Imagine the bureaucratic minefields of trying to buy the land, and the years, if not decades it would take to construct and bring on-line a huge new power plant in the Hudson Valley.

“We can’t seem to catch a break,” said Castricone. “First the MTA tax, then the mandates of Obamacare, and now an arbitrary decision by an obscure bureaucracy in Washington, DC are driving yet another nail in the coffin of our local economy. No wonder people can’t wait to get out.”